For the AAR Annual Meeting
in
Chicago, Illinois, USA
November
1-3, 2008:
*Time and room assignments are subject to change. Please
consult final time and room assignments available in the
onsite Annual
Meeting Program At-A-Glance.*
A1-219
Mysticism Group
Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
CHT-Continental C
June McDaniel, College of Charleston, Presiding
Theme: The Stages of Mystical Development
The four papers in this session will examine how a variety of
mystics and scholars of mysticism have understood the progress
of spiritual development. The papers will explore benchmarks and
roadmaps of mystical transformation. They include mystical journeys
in patristic and medieval Christianity, and understandings of mystical
development in Gaudiya Vaishnava and Western philosophy.
Katherine Rousseau, University of Colorado, Denver
Bodies and Maps: The Sensory Journey in the Apocalypse of Paul
Abstract: The Apocalypse of Paul, written in the fourth century
CE, puts phenomena on display as the seer moves through the structured,
museum-like space of the apocalyptic landscape. During his journey,
the seer’s sensory experiences are manifest and integral to the
revelation, through sight and sound, the promise of taste and smell,
the observation of temperature extremes, the travel through contrasting
geographic terrains. The Apocalypse of Paul is a mystical revelation
experienced by an individual, or, in DeConick's words, a 'verbal
map' that evokes for the reader a relationship with the divine.
This function of the text operates simultaneously with hortatory
narrative, providing both inward mystical and outward geographic-didactic
maps of the apocalyptic journey. The centrality of the senses and
body acts as a lens for viewing the otherworldly tour and qualifies,
though does not reject, divisions between this-worldly and otherworldly
– the corporeal and the spiritual.
John Reardon, Fordham University
Do Different Mystical Experiences Interrelate as Developmental
Stages? Revisiting R. C. Zaehner's Theory of Mysticism
Abstract: The name of R.C. Zaehner, Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions
and Ethics at Oxford University from 1952-1974, has largely been
absent from the conversation about mysticism in recent decades.
This omission is unfortunate, for Zaehner has much to offer. On
the phenomenological level, he makes a persuasive case for the
plurality of mystical experiences, dividing them into nature mysticism,
the mysticism of isolation, and theistic love mysticism. On the
other hand, the degree to which Zaehner makes a convincing case
when he argues that these experiences relate to each other as developmental
stages culminating in an I-Thou union with God is likely to depend
on one's theological perspective.
Ann M. Caron, St. Joseph College
Christian Medieval Women Mystics: Spiritual Senses and Stages of
Mystical Development
Abstract: In the history of Christian mysticism one of the most
important branches of discourse about inner transformation has
been the language of the spiritual senses. This paper will proceed
in two sections: a brief introduction in which I will highlight
the foundational work of Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux. The second
section focuses on selections from the Liber specialis gratiae
(The Book of Special Grace) attributed to Mechtild of Hackeborn
and The Flowing Light of the Godhead of the beguine Mechthild of
Magdeburg. Attention will be directed to the journey toward union
with God and the uses sensory language of sight and hearing, the
language of taste, touch and smell to articulate the immediacy
of union with God.
Travis Chilcott, University of California, Santa Barbara
Religious Practice, Doctrines, and the Production of Mystical States
Abstract: This paper examines the ways in which Gaudiya Vaishnava
doctrines and practices work to induce mystical experiences by
systematically initiating and effecting a restructuring of the
practitioner’s psyche. We will use the 17th Madhurya Kadambini
of Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakur as a reference point from which
to frame and highlight the core doctrine and practices under consideration.
Psychologically, we will examine the way Gaudiya doctrines and
practices alter the conscious and non-conscious mental and emotional
processes that inform and shape a person’s intra-psychic structures,
resulting in their transformation and setting the stage for the
experience of states of consciousness deemed mystical. The usefulness
of this method extends beyond its application to the specific practices
of medieval Gaudiya Vaishnavism and provides a model for interpreting
and understanding how other forms of doctrines and practices associated
with the generation of “mystical experiences” may induce such states.
Business Meeting:
Laura Weed, College of Saint Rose
A2-274
Western Esotericism Group and Mysticism Group
Sunday - 3:00 pm-4:30 pm
CHT-Joliet
Wouter Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam, Presiding
Theme: Visualization in Mystical and Esoteric Practice
This panel investigates the visual dimensions of mystical and
esoteric practices from three very different perspectives. The
first paper draws on the work of William James to assess the validity
and value of visionary mystical insights obtained through the use
of entheogens in comparison to more well known, non-entheogenic
mystical paths. The second and third papers deal with visualization
techniques in Pure Land Buddhism and the Jewish Kabbalah respectively.
This panel analyzes the role of visualization in the induction
and elaboration of mystical states.
G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University
Entheogenic Mysticism: A Jamesian Assessment
Abstract: Entheogenic Mysticism: A Jamesian Assessment This paper
draws upon the work of the American philosopher and psychologist,
William James, as a way to begin the difficult task of assessing
the validity and/or value of the visionary/mystical insights that
are obtained via the ingestion of entheogens (e.g., consciousness
altering substances such as peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, or ayahuasca).
By exploring James’s alternative to the typical understanding that
our states of consciousness are “produced” by the neuro-chemical
activity of the brain, and by applying James’s three-fold proto-pragmatic
criteria of “immediate luminosity,” “philosophical reasonableness,”
and “moral helpfulness” to the Santo Daime tradition (a Brazilian
syncretistic new religious movement that centers around the ritual
ingestion of ayahuasca), this paper attempts to uncover whether
entheogenic mysticism is as valid and spiritually transformative
as the more well-known non-entheogenic mystical paths (e.g., Christian
mysticism, Sufism, as well as Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist mysticism).
June Leavitt, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Speech, Image, and Ecstasy: Divine Enlightenment in the Brotherhood
of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai
Abstract: It can be implied from the Zohar, the preeminent cabalistic
text, that the mystical rapture of the Shimon Bar Yochai brotherhood
was enabled by social interaction and excited by human speech.
For the Zohar mystics, who believed that God created the world
through words and human beings in his image even a chance meeting
on the road between the brotherhood and a stranger(Zohar II 13a-13b)
is pushed into a climax of Divine illumination. Through a dialogue
laden with Jewish theological images which suggest a technique
of collectively visualizing the Divine, the Brotherhood exploits
the full theurgic potential of human enocunter and verbal exchange.
Journeying together throughout the hills of the Galilee in an undending
flow of discourse the brotherhood of Shimon bar Yochai saw every
moment as a speech event that could bring on rapture through an
activation of imagination and intellect.
John M. Thompson, Christopher Newport University
Forcing the Buddha to Show Himself: Early Pure Land “Mystical”
Visualization
Abstract: The Pratyupanna Sutra (Panzhou sanmei jing), an immensely
influential text in China, centers on a visualization technique
known as the pratyupanna samadhi in which, through intense concentration
over seven days and nights, a practitioner will attain a vision
of Amitabha Buddha. Such visions, often understood to guarantee
rebirth in Amitabha’s “Pure Land,” raise major questions for students
of religious experience and mysticism. Among these are questions
concerning the relation of ascesis to religious experiences, the
similarities (and differences) between the “numinous” and the “mystical,”
the appropriateness of theoretical models of mystical experience
proposed by W. T. Stace, R. C. Zaehner, Steven Katz and Robert
Forman. Certainly some scholars may not consider the practice of
pratyupanna samadhi to be truly “mystical,” yet we cannot deny
such visions are powerful and deeply compelling. Like all extraordinary
experiences, they challenge our conventional views of reality and
the human situation.
A3-219
Mysticism Group and Eastern Orthodox Studies Group
Monday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
CHT-Lake Michigan
Thomas Cattoi, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Presiding
Theme: Eastern Orthodoxy and the Spiritual Senses
This co-sponsored session of the Mysticism Group and the Eastern
Orthodox Studies Group will examine ways that the spiritual practices
of Eastern Orthodoxy have been understood and developed, as well
as how sensory and imagistic practices that originated within Eastern
Orthodoxy have spread to Western Christian mystical practices.
Sarah Coakley, Harvard University
Gregory of Nyssa on the Spiritual Senses: A Reconsideration
Abstract: This paper proposes a reconsideration of the ‘spiritual
senses’ theme in Gregory of Nyssa, at two levels. First, the modern
context of Daniélou’s rediscovery is briefly explored and analysed.
It is shown that Daniélou was strongly influenced in his retrieval
both by a Jesuit inheritance of spiritual direction reaching back
to the 18th century, and by the motivations of the emerging nouvelle
théologie in the mid-20th century. This led to a selective and
misleading understanding of Nyssen, however, and a failure to acknowledge
the crucial differences between Gregory’s and Origen’s reading
of the theme. Secondly, the distinctive features of Nyssen’s own
construal of the ‘spiritual senses’ is then explored anew, focusing
particularly on de anima et resurrectione. Whereas Origen tends
to make the physical and ‘spiritual’ senses dualistically disjunct,
Nyssen suggests a progressive transformation from the former to
the latter.
Derek Michaud, Boston University
The Patristic Roots of John Smith’s 'True Way or Method
of Attaining to Divine Knowledge'
Download PDF of this
paper
Abstract: This paper provides a close reading
and analysis of the reception and modification of Origen of Alexandria’s
(185-252) doctrine of the spiritual senses in the early modern
period in the “Discourse on the True Way or Method of Attaining
to Divine Knowledge” by the Cambridge Platonist, John Smith (1618-1652).
Smith accepted much of the doctrine as he found it in Origen but
was too modern and too Protestant simply to take the doctrine on
authority. Instead, Smith offers his own case for the spiritual
senses, at once echoing Origen’s own words (as source) and mimicking
his interpretive synthesis of (Middle/Neo-) Platonism and Scripture
(as model), that Smith used as the basis for his distinctly modern
theological method which influenced John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards.
The paper thus presents a moment in the development of the spiritual
senses that begins to bridge the scholarship on the Patristic,
Medieval, and the Enlightenment periods.
Brandon Withrow, Samford University
A Connecticut Valley Yankee in a Cappadocian Court: Jonathan Edwards,
Eastern Christianity, and the “Spiritual Sense”
Abstract: Starting in 1721, colonial theologian Jonathan Edwards
grappled with a personal conversion that contradicted expectations
bequeathed by his Western Puritan forefathers. Rather than a conversion
experience driven by fear and trembling, Edwards discovered within
himself a “spiritual sense” that unveiled the beauty and mystery
of the divine nature. This “spiritual sense”—which he derives from
his incarnational analogy and union with the divine—participates
in trajectories set by the mystical thought of the Cappadocian
fathers and those in orbit with their theology—such as Gregory
Palamas and Didymus of Alexandria—and benefits particularly from
the latter’s understanding of the incarnation. To date, brief studies
have drawn parallels between Edwards and Eastern Christianity through
Neoplatonism. While this is beneficial, a closer look at Edwards’s
use of Didymus’s incarnational analogy will provide a clearer picture
of the competing trajectories at play in New England spirituality.
Joseph Molleur, Cornell College
A Hindu Monk’s Appropriation of Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer:
The “Inner Senses” of Hearing and Seeing in Comparative Perspective
Abstract: One of the most influential monks of the (Hindu) Ramakrishna
Order to have “come to the West” is Swami Prabhavananda, who led
the Vedanta Society of Southern California from 1923 until his
death in 1976. In three of his published commentaries (two on Hindu
sacred texts and one on the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount),
Prabhavananda quotes extensively from The Way of a Pilgrim and
the Pilgrim Continues His Way, Russian Orthodoxy’s classic text
on the practice of the frequent (ideally, the unceasing) repetition
of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” The
aim of this paper is to analyze Prabhavananda’s appropriation of
Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer tradition, with special attention
to the issue of the “inner senses” of “spiritual hearing” and “spiritual
seeing.” The paper concludes by examining the suitability of thinking
about Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer as a “Christian mantra.”
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